This invention relates to a technique for providing a caller initiating an Internet-telephony call with additional information during the course of the call.
The proliferation of large-scale inter-connected computer networks, such as the Internet, as well as advances in the field of speech digitization, has made Internet telephony a reality. Indeed, various telecommunications services providers such as ATandT currently offer Internet telephony service. While present-day Internet telephony service usually does not afford the same quality as traditional plain old telephone service, most service providers that offer Internet telephony do so at a lower cost to the subscriber. For many subscribers, the relatively low cost of Internet telephony service makes it very attractive for many types of calls.
Many subscribers of Internet telephony service initiate telephone calls over the Internet via a personal computer. In connection with making such calls, the provider of the Internet telephony service may provide the Internet telephony subscriber with advertising, in the form of a banner ad or the like, at the choosing of the service provider, but unrelated to the call itself. Indeed, Internet Service Providers (ISP) that provide subscribers with access to the Internet generally often provide their subscribers with advertising chosen by the ISP. Since all subscribers receive the advertising provided by Internet telephony providers and ISPs, the advertising will often reach those who have no interest in the particular good or service being advertised. Consequently, such indiscriminant advertising has limited effectiveness.
There currently exist techniques in voice telephony for providing targeted advertising to a calling party. U.S. Pat. No. 4,850,007, issued on May 18, 1989, in the name of Patrick Marino et al. and assigned to ATandT, discloses a technique for affording reduced rate long distance service to a calling party in exchange for the calling party receiving an advertising message. During the call set-up, the calling party receives an advertising message selected in accordance with one or more factors such as the originating number of the calling party, as determined from Automatic Number Identification (ANI). In this way, the advertising provided to a caller can be restricted.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,084,628, issued on Jul. 4, 2000, in the name of Francois Sawyer, discloses a technique for providing targeted advertising to callers during a video conference call. Upon receipt of a video call in a telecommunications network, an ingress switch receiving the call will query a centralized database to retrieve an advertising message in accordance with the caller""s preference. The caller then receives such advertisements in a portion of the caller""s video screen. The called party may also receive advertisements. Both the calling and called parties may select among different advertisements for viewing. Once the either party has selected an advertisement, each may select a more detailed advertisement for joint viewing.
While these approaches do afford a calling party the ability obtain selective advertising, such approaches suffer from the disadvantage that they do not allow the called party to make content specifically available to the calling party at the discretion of the called party. Thus, there is need for a method for allowing the called party to make available (i.e., to xe2x80x9cpushxe2x80x9d) content to the calling party at the discretion of the called party.
Briefly, in accordance with a preferred embodiment of the invention, a method is provided for enabling a calling party placing an Internet telephony call to selectively receive content information during the course of the call at the discretion of the called party, the calling party, or a combination of both. The method commences upon receipt at an Internet Telephony Service Provider of a calling party number and a dialed number from a calling party initiating an Internet telephone call. Following receipt of the calling party number and dialed number, the Internet telephony provider serves to set-up the Internet telephony call. In the course of setting up the call, the Internet Telephony Service Provider determines what targeted information (e.g., advertising, topical information, regional-specific information, caller authentication, streaming video feed) to provide to the calling party in accordance with a match with at least the dialed number, and more preferably, in accordance with a match between a combination of the dialed number and the called party number. Thereafter, the Internet Telephony Service Provider makes such targeted information available to the calling party, typically in the form of one or more Universal Resource Locators (URLs) which the calling party may access at their discretion. As needed, the Internet Telephony Service Provider may update the content provided to the calling party during the course of the call.